


We Must, Who Have None

by LookingForDroids



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, First Meetings, POV Second Person, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22222429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: Kuprum stumbles on a dying girl in an alley, and everything changes.
Relationships: Folykl Darane/Kuprum Maxlol
Comments: 14
Kudos: 56
Collections: Purrsonal Picks





	We Must, Who Have None

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from a Peter S. Beagle quote.

Your first thought when you see the kid huddled in the alley is that she’s dead, which is… you don’t know what it is. You’ve seen a lot of corpses in your life, and it’s not like they usually bother you, but there’s something lonely about this one. There’s no blood spattering the walls, no sign of violence, just something small and shabby discarded where it had fallen. Then the ragged bundle moves. There’s a shuddering twitch beneath the too-big hoodie, and the rasping scratch of claws on asphalt, and your second thought is _FUCK, she’s not dead_. She lifts herself on one arm and turns her head slowly towards you, and as the lank hair falls back from her face, you see the absence where her eyes should be.

You’ve spent too many hours making the gullible wigglers on /urbanlegends piss themselves in terror not to know what you’re looking at, and no matter how much time you’ve spent getting yourself into compromising situations involving a hive-made battery-and-restraint device, you’re not prepared for the shock of fear when you see the two black pits in her face and it hits you that reality doesn’t come with an off switch.

 _Too weak to do more than crawl,_ you remember telling some wide-eyed rusty, _but they don’t stop. They’re too empty for that. You’ll be back at your hive, just sitting around with your thumb stuck up your waste-chute like the twerp you are, and you’ll hear a sound like the husk of something dead clawing its way across the floor, and —_

And you should be getting your abscond on, but your third thought is _she needs help,_ and then, rolling up from a part of your mind that hasn’t been accessed in sweeps, _I can help._

You’re not great at helping. You’re good at pwning assholes and getting your grasp-fronds on delicate personal information, and fucking awesome at almost getting your ass culled by drones, and you have a certain raw talent for finding half-empty bags of crispy cheese-product approximations in other people’s trash, and that and one other thing is all you’ll ever be good for. But hey, funny coincidence there. A real bucket of LOLs. The one solitary thing on this bitch of an Alternia that you were hatched for, and it’s exactly what this kid fucking needs. You’re not sure how that makes you feel, but when you move again, it’s to take a step closer, not away. You’re sure she can’t see you, but her head shifts a fraction to track your motion, which is creepy but whatever. You’ll live. You hope.

“You’re… not scared?” she says. Her voice is dry and scratchy, barely audible, and even speaking seems to take it out of her.

“LOL, nah,” you say. 

“You should be,” she says, and that’s when you realize that she’s fucking terrified. The smart thing to do would be to call the drones, or just cull her yourself from a distance, and both of you know it. That’s what Trizza would want you to do. But next thing you know, you’re crouching down in the grime and garbage of the alley, reaching out to gather her in your arms. There’s a sudden sharp pull at your psionics as she reaches back — like stepping into a cold current, feeling it rush through your thoracic struts and carry your energy along with it as it goes. You jerk back, more in surprise than weakness, and she holds on tighter, wrapping her skinny arms around your shoulders with desperate strength. You could pry her loose if you wanted, throw her back against the wall and just fucking run. You don’t do any of those things. You stay where you are, holding her against your chest, letting her have what she needs. When you look down again, she’s grinning up at you, all her fangs sharp and bared. 

“You know… if we drain you dry… you turn… into one of us?”

You remember convincing that little rust kid to believe that shit. You feel kind of bad about that now, but not for his sake.

“LMAO,” you say, enunciating every letter. “Do I look like an idiot to you? LOLOL.”

“You don’t look like… anything to me… dunkass,” she says. “I’m… blind. But you smell… like unwashed nook.”

“You smell like a delicate flower garden full of sewage,” you say, and she sticks her tongue out and shoots you a grimace that would give the idiot population of /urbanlegends screaming daymares. But she’s shaking in your arms, and whatever you smell like, which you know is probably nothing great, she leans against you and buries her face in your shirt like she never wants to let go. Even for a gold, you’re not the strongest lususfucker in the world, but she’s so light you barely need any psi to take her weight, hollow as an empty paper bag, and all you know is that you’re not going to let her die.

And the fucked up thing is that out of all of it, _that’s_ the thing that’s got you freaking out, with an intensity you thought you’d burnt out of yourself hunting for helm schematics on the dark web long ago. _Yeah,_ you used to tell yourself, _you were hatched for that,_ poking at the truth of it like a broken fang, making yourself look until somewhere along the line, fear transmuted into the kind of fuel that burns hotter and nowhere near as clean. No point in being broken up about your place in the universe. You learn to live with it. You make it yours. But all of a sudden, it makes a difference what you choose to do, and that’s not something you know how to live with any longer. So you breathe until the wave of sick unsteady panic passes, and then you choose to lift her, and take her with you in search of wherever your hive will be when the sun rises. If the drones have a problem with that, you decide, then you have a problem with them, and enough juice to make a real fucking issue out of it.

Enough to keep the girl you’re carrying alive, too, and that matters more. The psychic drain has abated, though it isn’t gone, and she isn’t shaking any longer. Her sunken eyes are closed, and her breathing slows and deepens as you float along. The future tilts on its axis and realigns itself. You feel the way she sighs in her sleep, curling closer against you, and all you can think is, _Maybe I was hatched for this instead._


End file.
